Spaces: Patrick and Carla Heath

By Chrissie Murnin, For the Express-News

Published 12:09 pm, Friday, April 19, 2013

Photo: Photos By Danny Warner / For The Express-News

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The Schmidt-Heath home was first a one-room log cabin and lean-to built by Eduard Schmidt for himself, his wife and their first two children on 402 acres of land. Patrick and Carla Heath bought the home and the remaining 259 acres in 1988. It is on the Comfort Heritage Foundation's Early Homes Tour on Saturday. less

The Schmidt-Heath home was first a one-room log cabin and lean-to built by Eduard Schmidt for himself, his wife and their first two children on 402 acres of land. Patrick and Carla Heath bought the home and the ... more

Photo: Photos By Danny Warner / For The Express-News

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Schmidt added a dog trot, which has since been enclosed and is now the Heaths' living room.

Schmidt added a dog trot, which has since been enclosed and is now the Heaths' living room.

The Heaths have left the loft in its original condition. The loft was the sleeping area for the nine Schmidt children.

The Heaths have left the loft in its original condition. The loft was the sleeping area for the nine Schmidt children.

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A floral border was stenciled by an artist from Anhalt in the 1930s.

A floral border was stenciled by an artist from Anhalt in the 1930s.

Spaces: Patrick and Carla Heath

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COMFORT — “It found us,” is how Patrick Heath begins the story of he and his wife, Carla, becoming the first non-family owners of the Schmidt farm, a 259-acre property bounded by the Guadalupe River and Flat Rock Creek on the outskirts of this Hill Country community.

The Schmidt-Heath home is one of five houses on the Comfort Heritage Foundation's Early Homes Tour on Saturday. Some, including the Schmidt-Heath property, date to the late 1800s.

In 1876, 30-year-old Eduard Schmidt paid 25 cents an acre for 402 acres of country land, according to a family history compiled by Eduard's granddaughter Elizabeth Schmidt Johnson. He built a small shack for his wife, Wilhelmina, and two children to live in while their one-room log cabin and lean-to was being built. The land provided the materials for Eduard and his wife's relatives to construct the house. Cypress trees were cut into logs; limestone blocks were quarried, and rock was burned in kilns to produce mortar.

The children, eventually nine of them, slept upstairs in a loft accessible by outside stairs. Over time, the Schmidts expanded the house, adding a dog trot and two additional rooms in 1891. Porches came later, and major changes occurred in the 1930s, when Herbert, the ninth child, owned the house.

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Herbert bought the farm from his mother in 1917. The Heaths have a framed copy of the deed hanging on their dining room wall.

The remodeling, about 1939, brought a small bathroom and electricity to the house. The Heaths surmise that the massive cast iron bathtub was set in place and then the bathroom walls were built around it. “Because they certainly couldn't have put that through the door, so the bathtub came first,” Carla points out.

Black-walnut wood that Herbert collected from the property was milled in Fredericksburg and became a new floor in one room. Other rooms got new wood floors, too. Walls were replastered and painted. An artist from Anhalt cut stencils and hand painted floral borders in three rooms, the newer part of the house.

Herbert's widow, Clara, was the last Schmidt to occupy the house. She moved to a nursing home in 1985 after breaking her hip in a fall.

The Heaths came along in 1988, brought to the property by a real estate agent who had heard they'd been looking for ranch property for about a year. They liked the house just the way it was and had no intentions of making any changes to the house, other than painting the interior.

And that is the way it has remained, pretty much, for the last quarter-century that it has been their country home. The original lean-to is now the kitchen. The log cabin is the dining room, and the enclosed dog trot is the living room. The two added-on rooms are bedrooms. The Heaths left the upstairs sleeping loft spanning the length of the house, now accessible by inside stairs, in its original condition.

They furnished the home with family pieces; a checkerboard table made by Patrick's father when he was a student at Jefferson High School and a hutch that he made later, tables made by Patrick and furniture that came from relatives. Family quilts cover the beds; portraits of Patrick's grandparents hang in one bedroom, a portrait of his great-grandmother is in the living room.

More Information

Early Homes Tour

What: Five houses dating from the late 1800s to the 1930s will be featured on the Comfort Heritage Foundation's Early Homes Tour.

When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.

Tickets: $20; available in advance and on tour day at the Comfort Public Library, 701 High St., and the Comfort Heritage Foundation, 640 High St. Maps to the homes will be provided with tickets.

More info: 830-995-3131.

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It seemed fitting to decorate the house with older things, Patrick noted.